Quick JSON Serialization/Deserialization in C#

*This outdated*. You should use FridayThe13th the best JSON parser for Silverlight and .NET 4.0.

You don’t need to download an additional libraryto serialize/deserialize your objects to/from JSON. Since .NET 3.5, .NET can do it natively.

Add a reference to your project to “System.Web.Extensions.dll”

Let’s look at this example JSON string:

1 {
2     "some_number": 108.541,
3     "date_time": "2011-04-13T15:34:09Z",
4     "serial_number": "SN1234"
5 }

You can deserialize the previous JSON into a dictionary like so:

1 using System.Web.Script.Serialization;
2
3 var jss = new JavaScriptSerializer();
4 var dict = jss.Deserializestring,string>>(jsonText);
5
6 Console.WriteLine(dict["some_number"]); //outputs 108.541

So what if your JSON is a bit more complex?

1 {
2     "some_number": 108.541,
3     "date_time": "2011-04-13T15:34:09Z",
4     "serial_number": "SN1234"
5     "more_data": {
6         "field1": 1.0
7         "field2": "hello"
8     }
9 }

Deserialize like so…

1 using System.Web.Script.Serialization;
2
3 var jss = new JavaScriptSerializer();
4 var dict = jss.Deserializestring,dynamic>>(jsonText);
5
6 Console.WriteLine(dict["some_number"]); //outputs 108.541
7 Console.WriteLine(dict["more_data"]["field2"]); //outputs hello

The field “more_data” gets deserialized into a Dictionary.

You can actually just just deserialize like so:

1 using System.Web.Script.Serialization;
2
3 var jss = new JavaScriptSerializer();
4 var dict = jss.Deserialize(jsonText);
5
6 Console.WriteLine(dict["some_number"]); //outputs 108.541
7 Console.WriteLine(dict["more_data"]["field2"]); //outputs hello

And everything still works the same. The only caveat is that you lose intellisense by using the “dynamic” data type.

Serialization is just as easy:

1 using System.Web.Script.Serialization;
2
3 var jss = new JavaScriptSerializer();
4 var dict = jss.Deserialize(jsonText);
5
6 var json = jss.Serialize(dict);
7 Console.WriteLine(json);

Outputs…

1

{

2	"some_number": 108.541,

3	"date_time": "2011-04-13T15:34:09Z",

4	"serial_number": "SN1234"

5	"more_data": {

6	"field1": 1.0

7	"field2": "hello"

8

}

9

}